Several big oil companies have fallen into unlikely alignment with environmental groups calling for new taxes on air polluters like coal-burning power plants. One key reason: Those taxes are probably good for their natural-gas businesses. The companies are part of a collection of business interests, environmental activists and economists that have urged negotiators meeting at a U.N. climate-change summit in Paris over the next two weeks to consider potential carbon pricing policies as a tool to curb emissions. Such programs could open new markets in China and elsewhere for gas to displace coal. Most carbon-tax plans being discussed wouldn’t much affect transportation fuels that oil companies already sell, says the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Automobile fuel is already heavily taxed in much of the world, while coal-heavy power production often isn’t. “Coal,” BP’s chief economist, Spencer Dale, said in an October speech, “is likely to be more […]